I. Field
The present invention relates generally to communications, and more specifically to methods and apparatus for efficiently synchronizing a transmitter and a receiver in a wireless communication system.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, packet data, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources. Examples of such multiple-access systems include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems, Multiple Carrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) systems, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) systems, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) systems, and so on.
Many wireless communication systems employ a link protocol (LP) above a physical layer to provide fragmentation and reassembly for transmission of data and signaling packets. For example, a physical layer may transmit data and signaling over the air in units of 128 bytes, while the packets to be transmitted may be of varying sizes such as 40, and 1500 bytes.
The LP supports fragmentation of the packets at the transmitter and reassembly of the packets at the receiver. The LP may also include mechanisms for re-transmission in order to achieve a higher reliability than the physical layer can achieve alone. The LP transmitter performs fragmentation of packets and signaling sent over the air. The LP receiver performs reassembly of the received data. In order to correctly reassemble the packets, the LP transmitter and LP receiver may need to be synchronized.
There is therefore a need in the art for methods and apparatus for efficiently synchronizing a LP transmitter with a LP receiver in a wireless communication system.